


we can learn to love again

by siehn



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Shifter!Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siehn/pseuds/siehn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky through the years, trying to remember who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we can learn to love again

**Author's Note:**

> Shifter!verse for ciaimpala, who needed cheering up today. 
> 
> Title from "give me a reason" by pink.

\-------------  
 _it’s been written in the scars on our hearts_ \- give me a reason by pink

The first thing the Winter Soldier remembers is eyes that are far too blue to belong to any wolf. It's no more than a flash as he slips through the back alleys of Brooklyn sometime in the 70's, blood on his hands despite it having been a clean kill. It's _It's me. It's Steve."_ leaning over a cold table in the middle of a war, and the comforting scent of home at his side despite being buried in the trenches and trading fire with the enemy. His eyes flash wolf gold, and a howl tugs somewhere in his chest as the wolf stirs in his bones. It remembers; it knows more than they allow him to know, but they keep it separate in a way it isn't supposed to be and they both scratch wildly at the ice between them, trying and trying but never breaking through. 

He stumbles, catches himself with a hand on the brick wall of an apartment building and he knows he needs to go. The mission is completed and his handlers are waiting; they won't take kindly to him not showing up at the appointed time and place but right now there's more than the programmed instinct to obey tugging at him. It's something else, something primal and wild that remembers running these streets with _pack_ , something that remembers curling up on all fours around someone who carried the scent of home, content and at peace. 

There are parts of him that want to explore these streets that feel so familiar, that call to something deep inside. He wavers, instincts tugging and pulling him in different directions. There is no choice, though; it was taken long ago, and the tranq stings as it embeds itself in his neck. He has enough left to howl, the wolf inside raging against the ice inside his head, before everything goes dark. 

\-------------------  
It’s 1987 and he’s no longer the Winter Soldier. 

He doesn’t know who he is. Memory suggests he had a name once, and a pack; that was a long time ago though, and there’s a file buried somewhere with KIA stamped on it in red and a name that no longer quite fits. 

They tried to stop him from remembering, from learning who he used to be and just what the name Steve signified. They tried to stop him from finding the wolf that lives in his heart and the marrow of his bones, but it’s who he is and they could never quite manage to suppress that despite all the things they did. Instead he wears the scars as reminders, memories of the things he did, and the things that were done to him. He wanders, and never gives a name to the people who bother to ask; instead he gives them stories of a blue-eyed kid named Steve who never ran and was more than any wolf or man. 

The stories keep his own memories alive and warm, close to the surface where he can reach them every day.   
He never stays in one place, travels all over wherever he thinks he can be of use in order to make up for the blood he spilled on Soviet command. The longest he ever manages is a month with a tribe in Romania, humans and wolves who invite him in and tell him stories of their own. They paint a wolf on his skin with dark inks and bone needles, forever mid-leap with gleaming eyes, and the pain lets him breathe again.

“You are always running,” the medicine woman tells him in the language of wolves, kind when she doesn’t have to be. 

He thinks of blue eyes and the scent of home, and shakes his head with a sad smile. “Not running,” he tells her, knows she’ll hear no lie in his heart beat, “but searching.”

The pack lets him go when he decides it’s time. Their alpha tilts her head and smiles without teeth before she hugs him. “May the stars guide your hunt,” she tells him, something too knowing in her gaze. 

\----------------------------------  
SHIELD finds him in Budapest, two agents and the city falling down around them. Their information is outdated; he’s been off-grid too long and they still treat him like a merciless killer that has no idea who he is. 

Well, maybe not too outdated, but he likes to think he’s learning himself again. 

“What are we going to do with you, Sergeant Barnes,” Nick Fury says, staring down at him across a cold interrogation table and he blinks back at him because ‘Sergeant Barnes’ isn’t right anymore. 

“Whatever the puppetmasters tell you, I expect,” he answers lazily, refuses to be cowed because it’s been sixty years and he’s not a puppy anymore. “And I’m not a Sergeant anymore, Director.” 

“How about Agent, then?” 

It’s not something he expected, though maybe he should have. SHIELD is the child of the old S.S.R division, and they always did think they owned their toys. He hasn’t had a leash in years, and he doesn’t particularly want one now, but…

“Why the hell not,” he shrugs, stares up at Fury with wolf-gold eyes and signs on the dotted line. Never turn down good resources, and SHIELD is a good cover for the hunt he’s on. That tug in his head that he knows leads somewhere that ends with too-blue eyes and the scent of home tells him _yes, this_ and he’s learned to listen. 

\--------------------------------  
It’s 2011, and there’s an urgent report on Fury’s desk about something important in the Arctic.

He can feel things starting to converge, the tug and pull in his head is stronger every day, and the wolf that sings in his bones comes alive with the thought of _pack_ and _home_ ; things that have been missing for seventy years. 

It’s almost ironic that they find Steve buried in the ice; he remembers what it’s like to have to claw through the frozen wasteland and hope to make it to the other side. 

They send him out during the recovery process, don’t let him in despite the monumental stupidity of that, but he goes because he signed that line and he’ll obey for now. Except the memories follow him into the middle eastern sands; the way it felt to be skin against skin on the solstice, running wild in the hills of France. He can’t get Steve out of his head in a way he hasn’t had to deal with in years because his hunt is almost over, and he can barely breathe for all the things choking him. 

“Agent Barnes,” Coulson tells him when he gets back, muddy and exhausted, “there’s someone who wants to see you.” 

And there’s Steve, standing there staring at him with too-blue eyes full of disbelief and wonder and a hundred other things. He whines, not sure who moves first before they’re wrapped around each other, and his face is buried against the juncture of Steve’s neck and throat and it smells like home. 

It isn’t until later though, when Steve’s tracing the lines of the wolf that twists in mid-leap over his ribs, and they’re skin against skin again in a way that’s too real and painful and perfect, that he remembers who he is.

“Bucky,” Steve says finally, his name like a prayer, and Bucky Barnes remembers what it’s like to be again.


End file.
